She Nailed It!

hello friend welcome back to my mom's house this is my mom Susan if you guys haven't met my name is Becky and today we are prepping just one thing in order to have a party on Saturday today is Thursday and we are celebrating a baby shower this coming weekend we originally were going to have just a traditional baby shower for my sister but then we had to go out of town for a funeral and so we've changed it up a little bit instead of doing you know like ladies and brunch the baby shower has turned into a family Barbecue plus guests yes yes and a birthday party for a granddaughter we missed because we were out of town yeah so we are preparing the sides for a my mom said about 40 people were planning for so my sister is doing the main uh smoked pulled pork sandwiches we are doing creamy Chipotle roasted salad that is delicious with carrots and cauliflower it's a really just yummy salad we're going to do baked beans klaa collared greens fruit salad and my mom right now is going to prepare a lemon poppy seed cake to decorate for the shower yes and the granddaughter wants brownies out of a mix from a mix for her birthday dessert so today is Thursday we just went shopping in case you missed it and we got all the things we need in order to make all these sides for this party but we are going to go ahead and bake the cake now so that we can freeze it so that when I come back tomorrow my mom can decorate it she's got a very cute design that my sister requested that she make so while she gets going on the cake I'm going to actually zest the lemons and Juice the lemons for her and then I'm going to get going on the pound not the pound cake the baked beans now my Kitchen Aid mixer is probably 30 years old I did not know you could get replacement attachments my attachments were some sort of metal with white enamel which had all chipped up on this blade and this one this piece was the kind of metal that when you touch it it leaves gray on your hands so I just went on Amazon and these are stainless steel which is what I need to get because mine are starting to chip too and you all recommended getting stainless steel attachments I'm very grateful thank you for mentioning it to her cuz she mentioned it to me and I've used them probably a half a dozen times and I love them you good okay I'll go ahead head and Order myself some so while my mom is going to get going on the cake I guess I'm helping her with the cake too I'm just dusting these three lemons do you want all three of them zested mom uh probably I there's no reason why not to okay I mean it's kind of like garlic more is better y the zest part of the lemon is what gives you the lemon flavor cuz it has the essential oils but it doesn't give you any tartness any extra tartness and I saw somewhere that said if you use the lemon juice use the zest as well so I'm trying to get better about making sure I use zest in things and then I'll go ahead and Juice these for you too Mom yes here's the juicer we just went shopping for all the ingredients we need for all these things except the one thing we forgot was this fresh lemon so my dad did his his faithful Ministry to us to get what we forget we almost always forget at least one thing and so he always does us a huge favor in R the store for us and then I see that you have milk measured out here Mom I do do you have that acidifying or is that just measured out milk that you need for it's just milk I need for this thought maybe you were making buttermilk or something nope I've seen the new style of these where they go sideways instead of like this which looks kind of interesting well what I do I don't know if you ever do it is I turn it over and do it both ways yeah that's right you turn this part over yes uh-huh and then squeeze it that's a good idea cuz you can get more out of it that way and if you cut that knob off then you can get more out of it too that's a great idea I just put a half a cup of butter in there oh you got me in the arm sorry nice and fresh it smells so good this recipe calls for half a teaspoon of vanilla but vanilla and lemon more is better than o what do you think that is I think it's the vanilla seeds I think it's the vanilla seeds well see this is clear vanilla I bought this for a recipe for making actually a white cake and you didn't want any color in it but this would have little black floaties are you sure that's what they are I think so it smells fine yeah I think it's the seeds I think well let's see what says it's in what's in it pure vanilla vanilla Pura must be Spanish so my guess vanilla beans inside yeah must be the vanilla beans okay more sugar okay it says to beat one to 2 minutes don't skimp on beating it we want it to be nice and fluffy and the sugar and the butter all incorporate otherwise it makes the fudgy texture Den cake for Easter I made a lemon poppy seed cake and it was okay I am still working on my cake baking skills and this one that my mom makes is fantastic so I will link this recipe plus all the other ones that we'll be making down below below if you want to try them yourself you can see how light and fluffy that is going to add the eggs one at a time one of the big mistakes I made the first time I tried making the lemon poppy seed cake that I made for Easter is I did not whisk the fat and the sugar together for a few minutes like the recipe called for and so the cake was flat and dense and not Fluffy at all and so it really is key to making sure you whisk the eggs and the fat together for a good 3 minutes 4 minutes so it can get nice light and fluffy now we're going to alternate the dry ingredients with the lemon juice and the milk in two batches now a lot of times when you see my mom and I work with layered cakes we're working with Frozen cake and there's a couple reasons why we get a lot of questions about that now the first reason I think why my mom started doing it in the I followed suit is when my mom needs to make a cake for an occasion typically there's a lot more she needs to do for that occasion than just bake a cake and so one thing she can do in advance a week two weeks 3 weeks four weeks is she can bake the cake portion wrap it really well and then freeze it and then she can decorate it right before the event and it's just one less thing to have to do when she's got like a birthday we're celebrating or a holiday or whatever it might be but we learned a very good lesson that not only is it nice to have the cake baked and Frozen because it can save yourself time when you've got your event coming up but also it makes for decorating the cake a whole lot easier we have a couple big challenges to overcome when it comes to decorating this cake because we work with fresh unfrozen cake and you all might be able to give us some tips and tricks working with fresh cake but you will see why we like to work with Frozen cake Cy those are the poppy seeds I bought to plant oh did you yeah I didn't get any to germinate though oh well maybe they put a a germanator Eradicator on yeah maybe germinator deter Terminator yeah that looks good mom nice and light and fluffy let's check the oven temperature cuz I just turned it on at yep did you turn it up at 350 no so this is going to be a 3-day process to make all the food for this party so the first day we went shopping already did that and then we wanted to bake this cake so we could go ahead and freeze it so we can decorate it tomorrow and then tomorrow we'll be back and we'll do almost all the prep and get everything ready to go and then the day of the party everything will come together and I'm going to show you basically from start to finish the entire thing and we are not going to need any more baking stuff I don't think tomorrow right not really not because the brownies are in a mix yeah you know Gad delis yeah the Bestco Costco Brownies so I'm going to go ahead and get all this put away and my mom's going to get the batter into that doesn't go in there I think all the rest of these go in here I went ahead and prepared the baking pans oh and you did a great job I don't know if any of you have ever used parchment circles and spray if you don't spray the pan and then put it on and then spray and smooth it down the bubbles are strong enough to resist the cake batter the cake batter isn't going to push them out and you'll have very deformed uh layers ask me how I know oh they smell so good it does while my mom's putting the cakes in the oven there's one other thing we're going to do today and that's to get the dryed beans soaking and I can finish taking care of these dishes for the baked beans so these beans can then soak overnight so we bought the exact amount of beans beans we need so I'm just going to get these white beans in this bowl we didn't quite do exact we eyeballed it by cups but it's all right it doesn't matter it's not a it's not a baking science it eyeball it I never measure it exactly for baked beans so I'm going to go ahead and wash [Applause] these and I'm just checking to see if there's any that don't look super great and I'll take those [Applause] out that one looks a little questionable so I'm going to go ahead and toss that one we're going to make these in the crock pot we're not actually going to start cooking these today we're just going to soak them overnight so I'm going to cover them with a good amount of water and that's all the prep we're going to do on this first day I will see you back tomorrow I'm going head home now and the traffic yeah and my mom is going to take the cakes out of the oven when they're done did you set a timer mom I did set a timer 22 minutes 22 minutes so you'll see what those look like tomorrow when we are you going to freeze those tonight and we'll decorate the cake from Frozen yeah probably and I gave you some egg cartons so if your girls are faithful and producing I'll I'll take some more eggs hello friend we are back hi there and my mom is decorating this cake for my sister she has a I'll put a picture of what my sister would like for the cake the inspiration oh now that's pressure oh I guess I don't have to put the picture maybe we'll just show what my version looks like okay I won't show the picture but one thing is it's a very tall cake and my mom got little like decorations to put on it she sent them they're like this oh I didn't know that you already had I took them out to look at the size of things if you can see that it's a moon and then it say you'll see it on the cake welcome it's about that big welcome baby or something but the Cake's not quite tall enough all that to say uh-oh it's supposed to go like this welcome but then you put a welcome World welcome to the world probably yeah something like that but the Cake's not big enough so my mom is going to make another set of three cakes so she can have one that's twice as tall so she'll be able to decorate a little bit better and while she's getting going on baking another set of three cakes I'm going to get going on the collared greens I have never made my mom has never made Southern styled collar greens so we are going to follow a recipe and all these recipes that we're going to be making I will link down below if you want to try them yourself but while I'm washing the collared greens cuz there's quite a washing process according to the recipe I'm going to get the lower oven preheated to 450 because one of the salads we're going to be making is a roasted salad it's going to be a chilled salad but we need to roast the vegetables first so that can go ahead and preheat while I wash these greens so a big bowl here and according to the recipe we need to soak these collard greens in some vinegar water solution for a little bit so what I think I'm going to do kind of what the recipe says to do is to wash the leaves and then remove the stem from the leaves why do you think they soak them in vinegar I am not sure I mean it just says to pretty easy to make sure there's no bugs on them and sometimes you soak your vegetables that are hard to get the bugs out maybe it's to tenderize it I don't know I don't know so I'm going to go ahead and just maybe somebody knows and they'll tell us yes I'm sure if you know why we're soaking the leaves in vinegar let us know so I'm just going to remove the stem from the leaves and break this up into smaller bite-sized pieces and get that into the bowl I think I'm going to wash all these and then peel them off the stems so we're going to wash them or we're going to rinse them again after we soak them in the vinegar solution so a friend on Instagram sent me a video today where there was a trick where to juice lemons you just put a hole well that kind of was a big hole but in the bottom can I try juicy that's just water I'm not strong enough so oh yeah that kind of works but you would definitely get more out with a with more pressure oh I mean I guess I just broke it in half and I'll put it in here and Smash It Anyway so now I'm going to fill this up with water and put one cup of distilled vinegar in it so that's half this bottle and we're going to let this soak for 15 minutes my mom and I have both eaten our fair share of southern greens but we've never made it before so any tips and tricks if you see me doing something that you think could help in the future I'd greatly appreciate it I have grown southern greens in my garden but I never knew how to cook them so they just ended up being really delicious chicken snacks for my chickens and so if these turn out well or if you give me tips and tricks it would be good to know so that I could grow them and make them yeah all I've done with them is uh slice them and sauté them in like stir fries oh yeah or in egg dishes one thing the recipe does call for is a onion so I'm just cutting up an onion here Mom your knife is nice and sharp which is wonderful I just sharpened it I can tell and I'm just dicing this kind of like a small to medium Dice and then I'm going to get a big pot and we are going to cook these to start with in a pot and then we're only going to park cook them and then we are going to finish them in a crock pot tomorrow so I need a big pot mom you're looking in the right place I am okay just need to get oh yeah that should down below okay that's my biggest I mean I have the giant one let me go look did you find it yes awesome oh perfect yeah that that work that's the one I was looking for thank you uh top needs to be dusted okay this recipe calls for smoked salt and red pepper my mom has this smoked chili salt so we thought that this would be good and it looks like there's a little bit of coriander and some other yummy spices so I'm going to go ahead and get some of that in here and I'm going to turn this down that's way too hot already [Music] that smells fantastic what is in this I don't know where she got this sea salt chili cumin seeds coriander seeds clove and smoked Aromas yum mom where did you get this smoked salt um I think I got it in Texas at um they like a HomeGoods type store wandering around you know smells fantastic oh no Aldi oh Aldi I know we don't have Aldi and I I was in Florida oh nice with uh Aunt Mary was it in like the like kind of specialty things or was it in the spices it was in the spices they had a bunch of you know exotic spices and and that that sounded like it would be very tasty and you can incredible you can see I've used a good amount of it yeah it smells good and yeah so my mom keeps whole peeled frozen garlic in her freezer and it just makes it really nice to not have to peel garlic so I'm going to chop up a good handful of these that's 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 cloves and they actually smash really easily as they thaw because you know they frozen look at that yeah I think they're just a lot easier to handle obviously they're not fresh but they're not really I mean in cook things you can't tell the difference do you have enough I think so yeah it is important if you buy this garlic at Costco in a huge bag to double bag it for the freezer unless you want everything that's in there to smell like garlic no thank you and sometimes I end up having to put another bag over it as much as we love garlic I don't want my ice cream I was going to say popsicles not very good no yep that was and the sugar is 1 and 1/2 cups I'm going to make the broth for the collards so I was reading the recipe on on how to wash these and it says if you need to soak them again you can but these collards are pretty clean so I think what I'm going to do is just rinse them off one more time and I think we can go ahead and get these into our pot but first what I should do is actually get that garlic in there I think I'm going to go ahead and turn the heat off and let the residual heat cook that garlic while we finish washing our collards forgot the lemon zest and the lemon cake it'll probably be okay you could add that into the frosting oh but then you want the color you could add it into the lemon curd I brought lemon curd to fill the cake with that I could do [Music] that okay do that I'm just going to go ahead and fill this bowl up with water [Music] all right this is going into the pot now what I'm going to do first though is reread the recipe one thing my mom does is she likes to tape her recipes onto her cupboards especially when we do these big cooking days and it's very helpful so this is the one we're following right here so at this point we now have the greens that are clean and so now we need to sauté the onions and peppers and garlic which we did that pour in the turkey broth and the ham hot bring that to a boil before we add the collar greens so I'm glad I rechecked that recipe my mom is going to get going on the brownies because my we're going to celebrate my niece's birthday and she requested brownies and while she's doing that I'm going to go go ahead and just take this knife and run it through these greens just so that these pieces are just a tad smaller than how I originally broke them up I've made brownies before for fancy Vents and I don't know about you but when I done them in a pan and then tried to cut them in the pan um the brownie gets stuck on the knife and draws up and it's not nearly as neat and tidy as I like to serve it fancy so what I'm going to do is I'm going to cut parchment paper to make a bed line it with and then I can use the parchment paper to pick it up put it on a cutting board and then instead of trying to draw under knife through it I can take a knife and push it straight down that's a good idea and it just makes really nicer cuts it makes brownies look fancier but again I'm going to put the spray on the bottom and just like you do with your cake just like I do with my cakes you probably don't need to there's a lot of grease in in brownies now there's two ham Hawks here Mom should I put both of them in or just I would I don't know what I'd do with the other ham Haw okay [Applause] now I should get nice even Corners so only maybe the four corner pieces aren't going to be perfect edges it's going to take a minute for that 10 cups of liquid to come to a boil so I'm going to go ahead and get these beans strained that we started soaking yesterday for the baked beans while that's coming up to a boil two eggs we're going to make these baked beans directly in the crock pot so Mom once I put these beans back in the crock pot do I just cover with water then yeah okay and put the rest of the stuff in okay okay so I'm not going to finish that until something comes out of the oven for the baked beans I need to sauté some onions and bacon now I can get it better in here these are our favorite brownies they are comes in a big box four packages uh to the box and once I've taken a couple of the packages out I usually cut the Box apart so I keep the directions and rubber band The the envelopes to the remaining the remaining envelopes to the box with the recipe takes up less room I think this is my sign that I don't cook with ham Hawks enough because it already smells incredible in here oh my goodness that smells so good or it could be the bacon that I'm smelling but whatever it is it's starting to smell incredible in here so now we've got our wash collards and that's the timer for the cake I think these bottom ones I could cut a little bit smaller oh the brownies already smell good too looking good coming behind you beautiful 10 minutes but we could we could turn this oven up now for the veggies yes oo not that hot what the Collard say to do is have them simmer it's on the other side of this cover and cook collards for 1 hour or longer depending on desired tenderness stir regularly once done stir and then taste the broth and greens add a little water if the broth is too bold for your liking stir in vinegar and smoked salt we already added the smoked salt and black pepper if desired so what we were thinking we would do is cook them until they're about halfway done does that seem reasonable yeah I think so I think so because it's going to not be a meal served at a specific time it's going to be dinner and then or lunch I should say and then drop in so it'll be in the crock pot for quite a while so what we're thinking is we will cook them for probably half an hour 45 minutes or so we'll check them and then we're going to transfer them into crock pot and then they'll finish in the crock poot tomorrow that sounds like a good plan okay and then these bacon bits I went ahead and actually cut twice as much that you saw me originally put in here because I forgot we're doubling this recipe and we're going to let these get I don't like soggy bacon so we're going to let you like them crispy too yes yeah so we're going to render them pretty good and then we'll add them to the baked beans good and then we'll add the onions but now I think what we're going to do is clean up just a little bit since we've got our two desserts in the oven and we're going to start on our two salads so we've got two salads we're going to make we're going to make a Col SLA which we're not going to fully make it today because then it would be soggy and we are going to prepare the Chipotle roast vegetable salad as well this next salad I've washed everything except for I still need to wash this bag but we're going to roast the cauliflower and roast the carrots the jalapenos green onions cilantro and peas are going to be left fresh and crunchy now this recipe is kind of a funny recipe I can't even really call it a recipe because it's just been something that's been kind of made up and adapted over time I made this for my sister when I was doing the pantry challenge this last winter and I brought it to her house cuz we had dinner at her house cuz we didn't have any running water so she invited us over for dinner and I had made this and I think that's what it was I could be wrong on all the fine details cuz it was a while ago but she asked me to make it again and it's just funny because sometimes your new favorite meals come out of just making random things up based on what you have on hand so I kind of had to go back and figure out what did I do so that I could replicate it so I did roast the cauliflower not till it was mushy I still wanted to have a lot of yummy crunch to it so I'm keeping these relatively large we did do ourselves a favor and buy some already kind of cut up a little bit cauliflower for ourselves and pretty peeled carrots which Costco has now and so that makes it really really easy well I just thought it would be really pretty to have the various color carrots in there I think you're right so I like to cut the carrots kind of funky shaped a little bit and I want to keep them relatively large the original inspiration for this was actually my sister-in-law made a salad very similar to this when I had a dinner party one time that she brought over and I kind of based it off that one tablespoon of cider vinegar oh I like that it has two different kind of vinegars in it four teaspoons of sugar one so I'm going to season my veggies with some oil salt and pepper and garlic powder and now that we're looking at this dressing mom I think we do need a one and a half of it yeah taste this I don't like it so I wouldn't taste it oh yeah that's good celery seeds yeah that's good okay all right but I would just do half the celery seed yeah yeah that's that was half the celery seed perfect delicious so now it's half a cup of mayonnaise this is our favorite roasted garlic powder there's some roasted onion in there too that's what I got right here roasted onion powder you can get this online so I can link this for you if you're interested so yummy I think I think I'm going to put some of this smoked salt on here too cuz that'll go well with the dressing we're going to put on this salad now I have a question yeah all the garlic we've harvested at your house over the years have you ever roasted it and then freeze dried it the reason I'm asking is my sister is going to have a huge Harvest of garlic and she's wondering what else she can do with it besides just plain old freeze it she'd like to make garlic powder well I have never roasted it and then freeze-dried it I have freeze dried it and turned it into powder you can do that she could dehydrate it and turn it into powder or she can like blend it up and make a paste make a paste and freeze that in little cubes or something um but yeah you can I've never roasted it and then freeze dried it but I'm sure you could do that we should try that we should I think we might be able to duplicate penes penies yeah just give it a shot I mean there's so much garlic I have a whole bed so I'm putting pepper on this now and now my mom that Co saw is basically done once she does one half recipe she's just going to toss that dressing in the fridge and then tomorrow we'll pull put it in with a c Sal mix now one thing I don't think I we mentioned earlier the reason we don't think we need quite as much dressing even though we're tripling the amount of H like the actual cabbage part and we're not tripling the dressing part is because we use the shredded stuff from the store which is really really finely shredded versus when I cut it with a knife I can never get it that finely shredded so I feel like it can hold more dressing when the cabbage is a little bit bigger the recipe called for using a mandolin too okay so you can get it smaller with a mandolin yeah if I lik mayonnaise this would be pretty good it smells very nice but I just can't do the mayonnaise so we're not looking to get these super tender we just want to get a nice little Char on them we want them to still be super crunchy but we want them to not have that really raw flavor left so just slightly cook slightly tender but definitely not fully tender woo those are powerful with the seeds the reason I'm putting these herbs in this foil pan is because this is what we're going to be serving all the dishes in tomorrow at the barbecue what my sister has done is she has foil pans that are twice this size and she put about 2 in or 3 Ines of water in them and she has those in her freezer right now so that we can put these cold salads on top of the ice because we're going to be eating outside and it's warm outside so that they can stay nice and cool so we're going to get all of the components for the salad in the container we're going to serve it in tomorrow my mom is about to make the dressing she's getting all the ingredients out she needs to make the Chipotle dressing but we're not going to put the dressing on the salad until tomorrow just like with the colle sauce so the only other thing I need to do for this salad is wash these sweet peas up and I'm going to cut these on a bias and get these in here these are going to be nice and raw and crunchy and then we'll have the roasted carrots and cauliflower in the salad I'm going to cut these Peas on a bias so you kind of get the look of the pee on the inside and I just think that's pretty I'm also going to cut the two ends off just so that people don't have that stringy end just cuz I think that's pretty [Music] beautiful good job Mom so I think I'm going to call these good mom do you think these look good they're roasted I don't think I want them any more t let me stick a fork and see how soft they are that's a good idea I want them to have quite a bit of crunch still yeah they're still crunchy want does that look good uh uhhuh these are still real crunchy too like really hard that one oh yeah maybe we could put the carrots yeah put the the purple carrots are denser than the yellow carrots are they so maybe just a couple more minutes yeah okay once I take these out of the oven I am going to let them cool down absolutely completely before I stick them in with my sugar peas and my herbs because I don't want these to cook or Wilt or anything like that so we're just going to let those cool completely we've got a timer I think that's probably for the brownies let's take a look oh those look good you want me to take those out mom yes let me get a cooling okay there's something so delicious about a box brownie thank you brownies used to be made here at my house probably oh yeah five or six times seven times a year because one of my son-in-laws that's what he only wanted for desserts was brownies gelli from Costco brownies and they moved away yes and this is the first brownie I think I've made in a year at least and I don't make brownies enough I love brownies but I never have them in my house them we'll make some for the family reunion because they keep really well yeah we should do that so those are going to cool and then we will are you going to cut and frost those you know it's a birthday party so they need to be fancy I'm going to pipe uh dollops not I don't do roses but you know little twisty flowery things just to make it pretty a squirt on each one and then I have a three tiered uh dessert serving plate yeah tray awesome that I'll put them on and it will just be really cute I'm looking forward to it this bacon was some pretty meaty bacon and it is taken quite some time to cook down I think it's almost where I want it but what I'm going to do while it continues to cook up just a little bit is I'm going to go ahead and add the onions we chopped earlier and we're going to let these onions soften in with this bacon I'm getting ready to finish the baked beans cuz my onions are almost done I took the carrots out of the oven and now we have both ovens turned off so we're making progress and my mom is going to start making the dressing for The Roasted carrot and cauliflower salad so we're going to do a Chipotle dressing it calls for a cup and a half of plain Greek yogurt okay then it's um a/4 cup of mayonnaise I've had friends ask me how come I have so many rubber spatulas and Wooden Spoons this is why I know because I don't just cook for two people I cook for two people 75% of the time but the rest of the time I cook with Becky or others for big events and it really helps if you have enough utensils that you aren't having to wash it every single time okay three Chipotles one of my favorite ingredi three we'll taste it and if it's not enough we'll put more in garlic three I actually have five then it's three teaspoon of lime juice and 3 tpoon of olive oil I just squeezed this fresh lime juice I only need three for this but I need the rest for the fruit salad I need three teaspoons of this and 3 tpoon of olive oil and three tpoon of honey I should have put put this upside down cuz it's going to take a long time yeah I think I'll put it upside down and wait salt and pepper one oh this looks so pretty this would be a good marinate on some meat too oh on chicken would that be good or to put it in burritos or tacos ooh that's good there's some heat to it you might want to put just a little bit more honey but that's going to be really good on those sweet crunchy vegetables that's good it is good I don't think it needs any more salt but you can maybe put just a touch more lime juice in it I was going to say I would put lime juice rather than than honey very very good cuz I taste sweet whoa when you're done it gets hotter there is definely it gets hotter so once my mom mixes that in take one more test you're brave turning that on without putting the lid well I had just been doing it so I I don't want anymore that's too hot of my mouth oh yeah is that better a little lime more lime in yeah that's absolutely perfect all right now I'm going to find a dish to put that in and then that's done so I'm going to get going on the baked beans I took a paper towel to soak up any of the excess grease out of the bacon and onions but I did leave a little bit in there to that we're going to add some tomato paste the rest of this bottle of ketchup I just added some water and chook that around to get the last of that out of there next I'm going to add some yellow mustard I just sprayed with some non-stick spray this measuring cup that we had measured the onions out with and I'm going to use this to measure out my molasses that way it will slide right out of there all right I'm going to go get uh I'll clean this m up first I'm going to add the garlic brown sugar and last but not least wh suer oh I need salt and pepper to this too and now this is done so this my mom is going to start tonight cook it about halfway and then we'll finish it tomorrow is that what you were thinking Mom yeah well we'll just turn it on right now okay that way I can see if it's going to boil over not in the night boil over and then my sister usually we'll taste test this and adjust the sweetness or acid level as needed once it's ready to serve and we usually doctor it up at that point do you want this on low or high mom uh let's do it on high and I'll get it like almost cooked today okay I think that honey came in some kind of a gift package all right we're going to go get some lime I mean some mint those cakes are just about [Music] done we had a bad freeze this was a full Bush there was one right here Rosemary and one right there was a hedge with a mint kind of around in behind that's all that survived after the wow the ice storm we had my Rosemary died this winter too so I used to know which areas were which mints this is the mint you want I think for the dressing this one right here this is a beautiful one that's a beautiful one okay smells fantastic I just cut it way back yes a couple of days ago I didn't think about the fact we were having this party with the fruit oh I know I wasn't going to do the fruit salad cuz you could I could hack this down 3 or 4 inches and it will grow up beautiful but I kind of left those was big because the bushes were gone my mom's getting ready to make that dressing but I wanted her to taste for tenderness on the collards it's a good time to put it in here perfect almost done one more dish done so my mom just made my sister-in-law's dressing recipe we made this for Easter I will link the recipe it is equal parts honey lime juice lime zest and fresh mint that she just blend it up and we will put this on the fruit salad tomorrow we are about to decorate the cakes and so I'm going to take this lemon zest that my mom on accident forgot to put in the cake and I'm going to mix this in with just some of the frosting that my mom is going to do a crumb coat on the cake so no worries that the zest was forgotten we'll still use it the last big thing that needs to be done is to decorate the cake and my dad just brought an iced tea which is pretty fantastic and so we've been working on cleaning the kitchen so that we can just kind of focus on decorating the cake so the kitchen is almost all clean my mom has done a fantastic job loading the dishwasher it is one of her Specialties getting just one more dish in the dishwasher and I will go ahead and I think I'm going to go ahead and wipe the counters down is there anything else you want me to do we're waiting for the collards to I'm going to wipe it right here and then I'm going to take all these dish towels to the laundry and weesh pile here and the cool The Cools the cake should be cool enough to go ahead and frost those yes I think so and the collards were piping hot so they're in that crock pot right there they need to cool down before we can put them in the fridge cheers I need a drink oh I am going to try out yay my new cup I'm going to try it so if you missed it we went to Costco and my mom bought these really nice insul cups and I washed them in the dishwasher per the instructions before I used them and I'm going to put some ice and some sparkling water in the handles are removable which is kind of cool I didn't buy them but my mom bought two so she got four so you can have it either just like a tumbler type or one you're going to like the handle you've never I've never had one with a handle you're going to like it I think it might be easier to hold than to hold this yeah all the time what do you think of the cup I like the cup I switched from the giant straw to a medium size this is one I already had their small was even smaller than this in diameter so this is what I normally use it fits in the same hole obviously and the big one I almost drowned so we've got our three cakes that we just baked up today I got the counter clean we've got the frosting that my mom's going to crumb coat it with that has the lemon zest great I yeah I was just going to ask that yep and she's got all of her cake decorating stuff out now she is going to use some food coloring to decorate this cake and uh my daughter recommended I use this um she actually got it for me I've not used it before I normally when doing frosting uh because I don't want to add necessarily liquid to it they have a uh in a little jar it's a gel like a pig and it doesn't change the texture because it's not liquid that's normally what I use but she asked me to use this so we'll see how it works so it'll be a review of the Watkins assorted colors but I think we're just going to use the blue color right yeah that's all I'm going to use these were the originals and we made yesterday yes and these are what we made today so we're going to make it six High perfect I brought from my house lemon curd so we are going to put in the middle layers lemon curd I made this up and froze it and it thaws out beautifully there's just a little bit of plastic wrap on the top so it doesn't form a skin now I have a question do I need to uh put a layer a thin layer of frosting to prevent it from sogging into the cake I have never used lemon curd in a cake before so I'm not sure but what I probably would do is put a little yes frosting around the edge if it absorbs into the cake it might just make the cake more moist instead of dry out but I just didn't want it to make it solid make it good now we're going to do six layers so that's one 2 3 four five so we use about the third yes on each layer you want to taste it I made it I'll get it off the plastic here I got it right here for you okay I made it with my or lemons pretty good the video very tasty oh that's very tasty all right who I got some bigger piping bags this is where things get a little bit interesting when it comes to decorating this cake and you will see just exactly why so I'm going to kind of act as my mom's Sue Chef because she definitely has a lot more experience when it comes to cake decorating so the first thing I did for her is fill up her Piping Bag with cream cheese frosting that we added the lemon zest to so we wanted to add the lemon zest because we wanted to make sure we got that lemon zest flavor in there but we only added it to the frosting that my mom is using to pipe around to hold in the lemon curd and the crumb coat because when it comes to actually decorating the cake we don't want lemon zest in the frosting because it might show through the final decoration so we are just stacking cakes upon Cakes as we fill them with lemon Curt now the middle layer because we don't have quite enough lemon curd to fill all of them my mom decides to go ahead and just put cream cheese frosting all the way across on the middle layer and then the bottom two layers have lemon curd and the top two layers are going to have lemon curd on them now one thing you're going to notice is that cream cheese frosting and lemon curd are starting to kind of come ooze out of the side of the cake and normally my mom puts three skewers in her cakes to stabilize them them and at this point there's probably 10 skewers in this cake throughout the cake because these cakes are fresh the first three cakes that we baked the day before were never Frozen and obviously we just baked the other cakes and those are not frozen and right now the weight of the cake is definitely pressing down on the bottom layers and the frosting is pretty soft and so the frosting and curds are starting to quickly come out of the cake and we're starting to cut get a little bit worried about this cake this cake is very soft typically when my mom decorates cake she decorates them from Frozen but we had to bake a few more today so that we had enough to make a tall cake so what we're going to do is go pop this in the freezer we're going to go get lunch so it can firm up harden up and sit up tall and then we can come back and decorate it we don't usually have this problem cuz I think we usually do it from Frozen cakes yes and it causes the frosting to solidify a lot oh help you need me to help here we go let me are the do open yes I left the refrigerator door open we just got back from lunch and we were a little worried about this cake when we left for lunch because it was pretty soft and it was sliding it was going Northeast and southwest and over to the side as you can see we've tried to stabilize it with skewers and then it the pressure oozed the filling out so I've been trying to scrape it off it's been what probably 2 hours an hour and a half anyway and so the the frosting has had time to firm up so with the skewers I think it's going to stay now and we'll put it right back in the refrigerator as soon as we're done and she's going to be able to fill in all these spaces so obviously there's still you know spaces here we're going to fix all of those imperfections with a little bit of frosting I did do one thing before we left I made one more thing of frosting that's just plain so that my mom can mix in the color and she can Frost the cake with the colored frosting this is the lemon flavored frosting and this is what she's going to use to fill in all those spaces and correct any sort of essentially make a thick crumb coat to level it out I don't know if I fully Express the level of stress we had about this cake before we left for lunch we just kept saying at least it'll taste good at least it will taste good because we did not think that this cake with the weight of the six tiers and the soft lemon curd filling was going to stand up straight so the fact that it's looking this good at this point we are like oh my goodness we just might be able to make this happen and we end up actually popping this in the freezer after my mom gets the crumb coat on and that is the key so this cake does end up turning out beautifully but there was definitely a couple hours there we were not sure so I'm about to go pop that cake in the freezer weren't quite sure if we had enough frosting better to have a little too much than not enough so we're going to make a little little bit more frosting here so I have one stick of cream cheese in here one stick of butter probably about 3 tpoon maybe 2 teaspoons of vanilla and then I'm going to mix in powdered sugar until it's the consistency I want so there's that and then I'm probably going to put about half this bag and then while we're waiting for the cake to freeze in the freezer my mom's going to start coloring the frosting that I made right before we left so here this is the one with the least amount okay yeah from the you know what helps if you put a towel over it or you go slow yeah it's okay I'll clean it up my mom was saying earlier I think that this is the first time we are doing a party or preparing for a party where we don't then have to clean the kitchen to have the party at your house I covered the frosting we just made turned out a little bit lighter than the one I made earlier so we're going to go ahead and dye that one blue let me get I kind of like the different uh lines of color but I'm going to pipe it anyway so I don't know if that will show up do you want more yes please see how easy this comes out now and it's much easier to cut not in the pan my mom got out her cake stand she's going to put the brownies on but she will frost them tomorrow when she gets to my sister's house I think I'm going to take a little sample here now it's time for my mom to go ahead and decorate this cake and what we did is we actually had this cake in the freezer for probably about an hour so while the cake was in the freezer we finished or not finished but we kept cleaning up the kitchen my mom worked on getting the brownies cut up and we just kind of tied up some loose ends so to decorate this cake the first thing she did was go ahead and she frosted the top portion of the cake with the darkest blue frosting and when she was almost done with that I took the dark blue frosting and I added a bunch of white to it to lighten it up so it's going to go from very dark blue on the top to kind of a medium blue and then it's going to be all white at the very very bottom so what she did is after she got a nice pretty clean edge around the top then she took the medium blue and kind of just got some of it on there kind of globbed on there I don't know the proper term so I'm just going to use that term blobbed and then she kind of worked around getting that evenly spaced around and then she took the all-h frosting and she globed placed she placed that frosting around the bottom and then she took her straight edge and she ran that around around and around and around and there were some areas where there was like little air pockets and so what she would do is take her offset spatula with the coordinating frosting and fill in the air pockets and then she would take her straight edge and straight edge around and around and around she said this was more difficult than doing it when it's not ombre because obviously you want to try to keep that gradient if you're doing a solid color she said it's much easier to get a straight edge a lot quicker Mom it's looking so beautiful I think this is the last time I'm going to go around my mom was saying when she does this her trick to get really smooth sides is to go upwards but when you've got an ombre you don't want to do that cuz then you're going to mix all the colors together my mom wanted to transfer this cake to a larger cardboard round the cake is sitting on a cardboard round right now but it just just fits the cake and she wanted one on a little bit larger one so this was a little nerve-wracking but we were able to transfer it and then we are going to decorate it with the decorations my sister got and ask my mom to decorate now this really right here these little clouds that my mom pipes on is what brings this cake over the top I am just so impressed that my mom was able to do this just by looking at a inspiration picture that my sister sent her plus the little INB beds that she was given I think my mom nailed it so I'm going to show you what the original inspiration photo was it really looks good yeah it looks this angle with the dark it makes this look really dark so the only difference between my mom's and the original is they had little beads for the little clouds so my mom just piped on little clouds but I think that looks fantastic mom by the way those beads will crack your teeth yeah there you go we're just saving someone of visit to the dentist so there we go perfect the cake is done this is now cooled so we're covering everything this and the brownies getting those well not the brownies in the fridge probably but yes getting them covered getting the collar greens covered the beans I just checked them and they're still very very firm so my mom's just going to cook these until she goes to bed tonight and then she's going to throw them in the fridge and we'll finish them off tomorrow my dad is stepping in and doing the dishes for us so he started doing the dishes while my mom was decorating the cake and I will show you what this all looks like wrapped up tomorrow so we got all the things that we're going to get done today and it's just going to be a fun dinner so I will see you tomorrow when we wrap this entire meal up my brother-in-law smoked two pork butts and they turned out incredible so right when I got to my sister's house he had just taken the pork butts off the smoker my mom got to my sister's house probably about an hour early to get all the food over there and set up we got the salad dressing dressed on the fruit salad my mom dressed the kelot and then we decided that the Chipotle dressing was probably too spicy for half the people that were going to be there so we just left that on the side and people could put the dressing on their veggies as they wanted so here are the brownies and the dessert my mom made and then we've got the pork that my brother-in-law made and then my sister-in-law brought the corn salad so it was a Family Affair to get this whole dinner put together thank you friend for being with my mom and I yet again for another wonderful cooking day in the kitchen where we got to take time to hang out together enjoy each other's company make some delicious food and bless my sister and her new baby so friend thank you so much for being here if you want to watch a few more videos from me and my mom I'll pop them here you can go enjoy between now and my next upload I hope you are having a fantastic day and I can't wait to see you next time bye friend

Channel: Acre Homestead

Views: 168,661

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Id: Is3D_XJ-1MQ

Length: 64min 58sec (3898 seconds)

Published: Wed May 29 2024